The Valerian-Horatian law of appeal, 449, was directed against the recurrence of the decemvirate or any similar magistracy with absolute jurisdiction, and hence resembled neither the laws of the Twelve Tables referring to the subject nor the Valerian law of 509. It provided that any one who brought about the election of such a magistracy might be put to death with impunity,[1450] and is alleged to have been reinforced by a Duillian plebiscite of the same year, which set the penalty of scourging and death for the same offence.[1451] These regulations could not refer to the dictatorship, which was appointive not elective, and which continued to possess absolute jurisdiction for more than a century after the decemviral legislation.[1452] But legal rights by no means imply actual enjoyment; and the decemviral laws of appeal must have long remained substantially inoperative through lack of a power sufficiently interested in their enforcement; “the might of the few was stronger than the liberty of the commons.”[1453] The right was limited, too, by the first milestone,[1454] and hence did not affect the imperium militiae.[1455] The only punishment of a magistrate for refusal to grant an appeal even by the Valerian law of 300, was to be deemed wicked.[1456] Furthermore the oft-recurring dictatorship was unrestricted by the law, being in this respect a temporary restoration of the regal office.[1457] Not till after the enactment of the last Valerian statute did the people begin to enjoy in fact the privilege which had long been constitutionally theirs. The enforcement of the law, as in general of the rights of the citizens, was chiefly due to the plebeian tribunate, “the only sure protection even of oppressed patricians,”[1458] but itself a limitation on the jurisdiction of the assembly.[1459] At some unknown date after 325[1460] the dictator’s authority within the city was subjected to appeal; and it has accordingly been suggested that this limitation was due to the Valerian law of 300.[1461]